The Game of Love and Death
by lunylovegoodlover
Summary: Antony and Cleopatra. Helen and Paris. Romeo and Juliet. Lily and James. For centuries Love and Death have chosen their players and kept close, angling for supremacy. This is not a Game. Meet Tom Riddle, who has made an enemy of them both. Meet Harry Potter, the champion they have aligned themselves behind. This is not a Game, but that doesn't mean they aren't playing.
1. The Game of Love and Death

**A/N:** **This was meant to be Jily but somehow ended up being more about Harry. Whoops. Summary shamelessly paraphrased from the inside jacket cover of The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough, which is also where the characters Death and Love, the title, and the idea for this all came from. Practically everything else belongs to JKR, though I played with both source materials a lot.**

She waits a day before she plants the idea in his mind; it would hardly do for it to feel forced. She slips into his room and fills his dreams with thoughts of self-doubt and paranoia. It's almost absurdly easy, and when she's done she allows herself a moment just to watch him. They are kindred spirits, he and she, though he would laugh if she ever suggested as much in her present form. Neither of them interested in romance, and both with a darkness within. There are days when she wishes, almost, that she had chosen him as her player instead and oh, what a Game that would have been. She thinks that she'll have to keep an eye on him when all is said and done, though she doubts she'll have long to wait before he seeks her for himself. He's the loyal type; it will devastate him when she kills his friends.

The next morning, secure in her disguise, she watches as he takes the players aside. They're upset by his suggestion at first, but she can pinpoint the moment the idea takes hold. They trust him and what's more, they trust her. When they ask her to be their Secret Keeper, she'll say yes, and none of them will suspect a thing until her betrayal is complete.

* * *

This is not their usual Game. Romeo fell for Juliet in a night, after all, and it wasn't as though Helen knew Paris for very long before they ran off together. But Love, her eternal opponent, had asked if they could perhaps start early this time, let the Game last years instead of months, and she had shrugged. They would come to her in the end. They always did.

* * *

On their first night in their newly-warded home, she slips into the couple's bedroom, only to find Love already watching them."When will you accept that I've won?" he asks. "They're in love. They're as happy as they can be, given the circumstances." The accompanying glare makes it clear whom he blames for said circumstances.

"You defined what winning would mean, not me," she says. "They haven't chosen love above all else – if anything, I occupy more and more of their thoughts."

"And yet they've chosen to love each other despite that," he argues. "They're going to have a child, isn't that enough for you?"

"There's time yet," she says. "The baby may not survive."

He's on his feet in a flash, towering over her in this short and chubby body. "I'll see to it that he does."

She slips past him, changing her shape into one more familiar. It feels good to be in a female body again and better to cast off the skin of a traitorous rat. "Voldemort will come for him."

"Very clever, getting them to change the Secret Keeper," he says, his face twisting into something that, on a lesser being, might be envy.

Plays and counterplays. That's all the Game is, in the end, especially one as long lasting as this. It had been the easiest thing in the world to possess the Seer and ensure that a Death Eater was near at hand to report the danger back to his lord. It had been her opponent's play to cast Snape in that role and to resurrect the love he had once harbored for the muggleborn girl. Once warned, he thought that the Potters would be safe. Fool. No one is safe from Death.

* * *

October 31, 1981. James and Lily Potter have known each other 122 months and she is certain they won't make it to 123. According to the clock on the mantle, they have only a few hours left at most. The Game ends at the stroke of midnight, but Voldemort will make his move long before then.

Love stands in the center of the room, watching the couple as they play with their son. His faint smile makes her sigh and ask, "Are you ready to concede?"

The smile slips from his face as he turns to her, just as it always does. They are not friends, nor lovers, nor kin, though they have been mistaken for all three more than once. Their relationship is one born of necessity. In her wildest moments, she almost laughs at the fact that even they cannot escape the need for companionship. They're opposites and opponents by definition and yet they always manage to find each other. The days she spends with him stand out in the endless parade of time, and not simply because of the Games. For all that his motivations and essence are a mystery, she knows him well. When he says, "No," the force in his voice is enough to make her – her! – revaluate her moves.

* * *

His player comes to her first, plowing headlong into her arms without a thought for what might come next. All his attention is focused behind him on his wife and son as they flee. The life that fills her veins is fully of courage and sacrifice, a seemingly endless train of sorrow tempered with an equally unending capacity for hope. It's heady and almost intoxicating, and as she looks behind him at Love's slight smile, she thinks, _oh._

* * *

Her opponent gets to her player before she can. She watches as he draws strength from her devotion to her son and admits to confusion. She admires his determination even as she names it futile.

The man died with honor, but his wife has no such qualms. She is crying as she pleads for mercy, but mercy is a foreign concept to Death. Love, however, stands close by the woman, calming her soul even as her mouth cries out. His entire focus is on her player, and in a flash of clarity she realizes that perhaps she chose wrong.

The woman – her player, his, it doesn't matter anymore – comes to her willingly and full of joy. It's a rare occurrence, especially for one as young as she. There's a strange focus to the soul as it rushes through her, a power that she's never felt before. It threatens to overwhelm her for a moment and lingers long after it should have been spent.

* * *

They all three turn to the baby: Love, Death, and a being less than human who hates and fears them both.

Sometimes, strange as it is, things simply happen. While Love is occupied on the other side of the globe, a desperately lonely woman drugs a man into believing he is hers. While Death plays a Game, victims of a war she did nothing to stop begin to come to her. She collects them all, while he stays far away. She knows he feels for the dead or, more accurately, for their loved ones, but such is the way of the world. There will always be wars as long as there evil, and there will be evil as long as there is humanity.

She is not evil. She is not good, either; by definition, Death is impartial, undiscerning. But as Love positions himself in front of the babe's crib, the look in his eyes makes it clear that he thinks evil is just the right word for her if she lets this happen.

Beside her, Voldemort, triumphant, points his wand at the baby and shouts, " _Avada Kedavra!_ "\

* * *

They are not in Godric's Hallow. They are not on Earth, but they are not in space either. They are elsewhere, out of time.

"It's his turn to die," she says. She didn't make the rules, only enforces them.

"It's not," Love says.

"Because of course you're the expert," she says, scoffing.

His face hardens. This is the side of Love that the mortals most often forget. While she is limitless power, stretched calm and certain across the entirety of existence, he is passionate flames and sparks and determination, fighting through the cracks of every wall but hers with a single-minded ferocity.

"I won't let you take him," he says, and she laughs.

"Since when do you _let_ me do anything?"

"It's not his time to die," he repeats. "He's just a baby. He has a whole life ahead of him!"

"He was hit by a killing curse!"

"If he dies, Voldemort wins," he says, and she pauses, just for a second.

"How can he survive?" she asks, because there will inevitably be questions. One can say many things about humans, but she has yet to find a species that exceeds them in curiosity. If she were to let the boy live – not that she's going to – there would have to be a natural explanation.

"His mother's love provided a shield," he replies promptly, a hint of a grin teasing about his lips.

She frowns at him. It's a terrible idea and they both know it, but it's undeniably tempting. The boy is the best possible weapon against Voldemort. The Wizarding world will call it a miracle if he lives, and that and the prophecy ought to be enough to ensure him the training and help he'll need. With a few nudges here and there…

Oh, it's insane, of course, but still she wars with herself. It's ingrained in her nature to take those whose time is due, and clearly the baby's time is at hand. And yet she cannot think of anything she would enjoy more than Voldemort's demise. A child born out of a false Love who grew up to be a man who planned for no less than seven cheats against Death – never, in all of history, had there been anyone who enraged both of them so much.

"There will have to be conditions," she says before she can talk herself out of it.

"Name them," he says, letting her identify the emotion wafting off of him as joy.

"We cannot interfere," she says, considering. "Not unless he appeals to one of us directly. We've done too much as is. And he should stay near his mother's blood, if you want to claim that it's her love that protects him."

"It is," he assures her, his smile bright.

"No," she says, a slight smile curling over her lips in response. "Don't think I don't know one of your causes when I see it. You were planning this."

"I hoped," he says. "But it was Lily who made it possible. You chose well."

Like Love himself, each of his compliments is a double-edged sword.

She has to concede that, though she took both the players, she lost the Game.

* * *

Years pass. She doesn't lose track of the boy, precisely, but she has other things on her mind. There are riots in Delhi; the Soviet Union falls; student after student comes to her from a square in China. First Bosnia occupies all her time, then Rwanda. She doesn't see Love, and won't hear for years yet of his guilt over abandoning the boy for a decade.

Slowly, the number of deaths in Britain begins to rise. She collects the souls as always, and notes the number of muggleborns. A man falls through a veil laughing, and she is there on the other side to catch him before he falls. He smiles at her, unrepentant, and she smiles back before sending him on to his friends. She wonders if he recognizes her from all those years ago, and finds herself glad when he doesn't.

His death reminds her of the boy, and so off she goes to Scotland. It only takes a few hints to get the headmaster on the right track; she does admire competency. He destroys one of the Horcruxes, and she feels a little lighter. She recalls the sudden relief that had overwhelmed her while she was dealing with an earthquake in early 1993 and learns that the boy had destroyed another one.

For all that this isn't one of their Games, she thinks that their player will do quite well.

* * *

She finds Love again only a few months later, as he watches the teenagers and nudges them to pair off. She finds such things trivial and is far more interested in the attempted assassination of the headmaster. It would ruin her plans if he were to die just yet, so she arranges for things to go ever so slightly wrong. The boy behind the attempts is lacks the fortitude to become one of her weapons, but it is not yet his time to come to her so she ensures his master knows nothing of his failings.

She ends up taking the headmaster anyway, at the end of the year when he's passed the pertinent knowledge on. Love is bitter when they meet next. He rages at her, blames her for the ache in the mortals' hearts. A breakup on a funeral day leaves her the only happy one, after all. He calms after a time, as he always does, and begins to apply himself in earnest.

Some days, she thinks his task is the harder one; he must be diligent, must apply just the right pressure in just the right place so that the heroes' love spurs them on instead of holding them back. He makes just one mistake, pushing the red-haired friend away for a time, but, if she's being honest, she's not sure she could have done half as well. Her own task is far simpler, though no less interesting. With so many souls coming to her each day, she's at full strength. She hoards her power jealously; she has a feeling she's going to need it soon.

* * *

They are both at Hogwarts when Voldemort's voice thunders across the grounds demanding Harry Potter's sacrifice. "Are you ready?" Love asks her, and she laughs.

"I was ready a long time ago," she tells him. "This is what I do." She pauses, considers him. "Are you ready?" Normally when battles are being waged he is far away.

"Yes," he says, his face set. "Harry's going to need my protection."

"He'll have mine as well," she says, and takes some delight in his surprise. "Remember the Hallows?" she asks.

It takes him a moment, then – "Cadmus Peverell," he says. "Ages ago, that Game was what, 500 AD? You took him and his fiancée and his older brother, didn't you?"

"The older brother was a homophobic ass," she says. "He needed to be taught a lesson."

"So you released an incredibly powerful weapon into the world?" he says automatically, but there's no heat behind the words. They've had this conversation many times.

"That weapon is going to save Harry Potter's life," she says.

* * *

When the moment comes, an outsider might call it anticlimactic. There are no cheering crowds, no huge explosions, just a boy walking to his death. But he does not walk alone.

Five whispered words, and the stone drops into his palm. Three turns and a pulse of her power, and his family surrounds them. Love's hand slips into hers and their power surges together to make the four figures more solid.

They don't look real, not quite. They are more substantial than ghosts, than those men and women who fear her the most and fight to stay away from her. These four came to her, willingly or not, and stayed. They will return to her soon, she knows, making it easy for her to share them with the boy.

He will not walk alone.

Beside her, Voldemort, triumphant, points his wand at the young man and shouts, " _Avada Kedavra!_ "

* * *

They are not in King's Cross Station. They are not on Earth, but they are not in space either. They are elsewhere, out of time.

She falls into the old man's body easily; this conversation will be difficult enough without convincing the boy to trust her. For the first time, she looks into Harry Potter's eyes and he looks back.

She tells him what he needs to hear, no more, no less. She rather thinks that the man whose body she's mimicking would approve. He does deserve some answers, after having been through so much, but it's safer for him not to know anything about her or Love. It never goes well when mortals learn of their existence.

"Tell me one last thing," he says. "Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?"

She smiles. "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

A moment later, he wakes up and she allows herself a smile. There is still work to be done, of course, but the pieces are in place now. They've all but won.

Love, beside her, is less optimistic. "There's still a horcrux left," he reminds her. "None of this is any good if Voldemort just kills him again. Or are you going to keep resurrecting him?"

She opens her mouth to protest but is forestalled by Narcissa Malfoy's approach. They both watch the woman carefully as she leans over the boy with trepidation. Love moves quickly, darting to her side in an instant. He touches her shoulder and fills her mind with memories: an older sister who chose love over bigotry and another sister who only ever loved bigotry; her husband's arms, warm around her; her son's first smile. He reminds her of how heartlessly the Dark Lord has treated her family and how little benefit they have reaped from doing his bidding. He shows her the horrors of the battle and pushes her towards remembering that she doesn't know where her son is.

A moment later, the woman straightens. "He is dead," she says, and Love flushes with triumph.

"Well done," his opponent compliments him. It was a masterful job, drawing on many of his strengths which she lacks. She is glad, in that moment, that they are on the same side for once.

* * *

She can feel the power surging past her as Love shields the army in front of Hogwarts from Voldemort's spells, but all her focus is on the boy in the giant's arms. The illusion of death must be absolute, and so she conceals the rise and fall of his chest and diverts attention from his flickering eyelids. Another boy's soul calls out to her but for the first time in many years she pushes back, keeping the flames that would consume his body away from him. Her efforts are rewarded when Love lifts the body-bind keeping him frozen and the boy destroys the final Horcrux.

It is almost over.

Walking through battle, she is herself in a way that Love can never understand. She is not violent by nature, but there is no denying that war moves her as nothing else can. There are endless creative ways for her to arrive and a nearly endless supply of souls to collect. Each time another soldier falls, she grows stronger. She is in each of their thoughts as they fight, as they wish her upon their enemies and pray that she never comes for them. They become intimately aquatinted with her, these men and women who devote their lives to battle. They may fight under different banners, but they are her soldiers, make no mistake about it.

This battle is different only on the surface. The fighters are not career soldiers but civilians, dragged from their beds in the middle of the night. Many of them are children, barely of legal age if that. But their souls burn as brightly as their elders' and she knows that they would object to being called civilians; Voldemort has turned every day of the past year into a battle.

For the first time, she finds herself invested in the outcome of this war; not just how many souls she can collect, but which souls. By her very nature she is impartial, taking everyone at their due time and not a moment before. She has no time for petty human concepts of right and wrong, ever-changing and full of gray areas. She is only concerned with the natural order of things – the natural order which Voldemort has disturbed. Given a choice between Horcruxes and Hallows, she will fight for the Master of her Hallows every time.

She keeps an eye on the boy as he weaves his way through the battle, redirecting a couple of spells that would have gotten in his way. At some point, Love returns to her side, and she can feel his concentration as well as he shields the children from Voldemort's wrath.

The focus of the battle shifts suddenly, as the boy whirls and they follow his gaze to where a red-haired teenager is dodging a killing curse.

"He needs to focus," she hisses. Every moment he hesitates is another moment the war isn't won.

She can almost feel the effort it takes for Love not to snap at her, can almost hear his retort. But instead of arguing with her he darts away to tap another bright-haired woman on the shoulder. A moment later she is barreling towards the fight. "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!" she yells, and "OUT OF MY WAY!"

The boy is still frozen, watching the duel, but Love curbs her impatience by pointing out that Voldemort is similarly distracted. When the dark witch falls, it only takes a moment for her master to react. He aims his wand – her wand, the wand she created – at the red-haired witch and the boy explodes.

"PROTEGO!" he roars, and she grins as she feels Love's power expand.

It's just the two of them now, circling each other in the dark hall as the first licks of sunlight begin to peek over the horizon. Love works to maintain the barrier, but her entire focus is on the two men. Had she a body like yours or mine, her blood would be thrilling in her veins, her heart beating like there's no tomorrow. As it is, she stands still in the center of their circle, readying her power with joy.

The hall is tense with fear as words flow back and forth between the men. Most of their audience doesn't understand their conversation and she doesn't care. She watches their body language instead, noting the fear in Voldemort's eyes and the confidence in his opponent's. Love rejoins her once again, taking her hand just in time to hear –

" _Avada Kedavra!"_

" _Expelliarmus!"_

The spells hit her in the center of her chest with a power that would destroy a lesser being. She lets out triumphant shriek as the power flows through her, sending out a pulse of energy to return the Elder Wand to its master and another to obliterate the soul of her enemy at last.

There is only a short moment of shocked silence before the hall erupted into screams, but she is gone before the first shout hit the open air. Love will stay, she knows, for the long process of rebuilding trust and letting loved ones go. Her part is done.

* * *

That the boy survives for many decades more has nothing to do with her. She is busy with other affairs, collecting souls from all around the globe. She meets up with Love for one Game, and then another. She wins both times and feels no remorse as she kills the players. It is what she does, after all.

When she finally comes for him, she knows him instantly, and he her. His soul is as bright as it ever was, but the determined rage of youth has mellowed into something wiser. He is surrounded by his family on all sides, and Love's influence is so prevalent that she's unsurprised to see him there as well.

She sees her cloak, held carefully by one of the men in the room. Her wand and stone are far away, one buried, one lost. And yet the old man is content.

He smiles, and though his wife smiles back she knows that the grin is meant for her. When she steps forward to take his hand, his focus is such that she almost thinks that he can see her. His last breath is a peaceful one. He comes to her willingly, though with none of the force that his mother had, all those years before. As his life rushes through her veins she lets herself sink into it and fully absorb every one of his experiences.

And just for a moment she truly believes that all is well.


	2. The Tale of the Three Brothers

**A/N: This didn't fit in the original story, but I had fun writing it. Many of the sentences, and of course the base story, come straight from JKR.**

A madman desperate for his daughter tells a story, and on the other side of the world, she pauses. She remembers the Peverell brothers well – it was one of the few times she had revealed herself to mortals. They told the story all wrong, of course, but the important parts made it through.

As she remembers it, there were once three brothers who were traveling along a lonely, winding road at midnight. In time, the brothers reached a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across. However, these brothers were learned in the magical arts, and so they simply waved their wand and made a bridge appear across the treacherous water. They were halfway across it when they found their path blocked by a hooded figure.

And Death spoke to them. She was in a vindictive mood, the thrill of winning a Game strumming through her. Love had failed to convince the second brother to wed his love by the deadline and, having already taken the woman from the realm of the living, she was there to collect the man as well. She hoped to take the others as well, for she had taken a severe dislike to them over the course of the Game. But Death was cunning. She pretended to congratulate the three brothers upon their magic, and said that each had earned a prize for having been clever enough to evade her.

So the oldest brother, who was a combative man, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence: a wand that must always win duels for its owner, a wand worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death! So Death fashioned a wand from a branch of an elder tree on the banks of the river and gave it to the oldest brother. She hid a smile as she did so, as amused at the thought of a wand working for, instead of with, its master as at the idea that he had conquered her.

Then the second brother, who was an arrogant man, decided that he wanted to humiliate Death still further, and asked for the power to recall others from Death. At least, that's how she always saw it. Love later said that the man lashed out in his hurt, desperate to see his almost-wife again. Regardless, Death picked up a stone from the riverbank and gave it to the second brother, and told him that the stone would have the power he had requested.

And then Death asked the third and youngest brother what he would like. The youngest brother was the humblest and also the wisest of the brother, and he did not trust Death. She was suspicious of him in turn, but less eager for his death than that of his brothers. He, at least, was worthy of some respect. So when he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death, she, most unwillingly, handed over her own Cloak of Invisibility.

Then Death stood aside and allowed the three brothers to continue on their way, and they did so, talking with wonder of the adventure they had had, and admiring Death's gifts.

In due course the brothers separated, each for his own destination.

The first brother travelled on for a week or more, and reaching a distant village, sought out a fellow wizard there with whom he had a quarrel. Love was at hand as they dueled, his face thunderous. For once, he didn't blame her when the other wizard fell; he was too busy raging against the Christian church. In the last few years, they had begun to teach that relations between two men, such as the Romans had enjoyed, were sinful. The oldest brother had recently converted to this school of thought and in doing so had broken the heart of his lover. They had argued quite violently before, but this time, with the Elder Wand as his weapon, the brother could not fail to win. Leaving his lover dead on the floor, the oldest brother proceeded to an inn, where he boasted loudly of the powerful wand he had snatched from Death himself.

That very night, another wizard crept upon the oldest brother as he lay, wine-sodden, upon his bed. The thief took the wand and, for good measure, slit the oldest brother's throat.

And so Death took the first brother for her own.

Meanwhile, the second brother journeyed to his own home, where he lived alone. Here he took out the stone that had the power to recall the dead, and turned it thrice in his hand. To his amazement and his delight, the figure of the woman he had once hoped to marry, before her untimely death, appeared at once before him.

Now Love chastised Death, berating her for causing the man more pain. He demanded to know why she had ever killed the girl if she planned to let her live now. Yet the woman was sad and cold, separated from her love as by a veil. Though she had returned to the mortal world, she did not belong there and suffered. Love saw her pain and knew that Death would never fully let her go. He remembered the relentless love for her that he had filled the second brother's heart with and regretted that he had lost the Game. He went to Death and begged her to put them out of their misery, but, still angry with the brother, she refused. Finally the second brother, driven mad with hopeless longing, killed himself so as truly to join his love.

And so Death took the second brother for her own.

But though Death searched for the third brother for many years, she was never able to find him. Love, angry at her, found the man's true love and watched happily as they grew old together. Though she questioned him, he refused to tell her where they lived. It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son. And then he Death as an old friend and went with her gladly, and, having proven himself a worthy opponent, departed this life.


End file.
